Data Interoperability via Persistent Identifiers: Libraries Leading the Way
Academic research institutions are increasingly looking for ways to “connect the dots” between their researchers, funding, activities, and research contributions in order to measure impact and meet reporting requirements while also streamlining workflows to reduce administrative burden. Persistent identifiers (PIDs), such as DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) for publications, datasets, and other outputs, and ORCID iDs (Open Research & Contributor Identifiers) for individuals, have emerged as part of the crucial best practices for establishing these connections while also serving as a mechanism for interoperability in sharing data across systems.
Academic libraries have and continue to play a key role in adopting and promoting use of PIDs in the scholarly communication landscape. For example, since the formation of the ORCID US Community consortium in 2018, there has been a significant increase in usage of ORCID iDs by individuals in addition to institutional usage of the ORCID API (application programming interface) in local systems to streamline researcher publishing and reporting workflows. Similarly, the new LYRASIS DataCite US Community consortium (launched in 2021) aims to lower the barrier of participation and encourage more adoption and usage of DOIs (and the DataCite API) for library-hosted materials like electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), pre-prints, datasets, open educational resources (OERs), and other items in local repositories.
This session will provide an overview of how libraries can lead the way in using ORCID, DOIs, and other PIDs to more accurately gather information needed to assess and measure institutional impact, with a focus on current trends related to the ORCID and DataCite APIs.
